Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein trav­els across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, the United States, Britain, Greece, and Australia to witness the reality of disaster capitalism. He discovers how companies such as G4S, Serco, and Halliburton cash in on or­ganized misery in a hidden world of privatized detention centers, militarized private security, aid profiteering, and destructive mining.

Disaster has become big business. Talking to immigrants stuck in limbo in Britain or visiting immigration centers in America, Loewenstein maps the secret networks formed to help cor­porations bleed what profits they can from economic crisis. He debates with Western contractors in Afghanistan, meets the locals in post-earthquake Haiti, and in Greece finds a country at the mercy of vulture profiteers. In Papua New Guinea, he sees a local commu­nity forced to rebel against predatory resource companies and NGOs.

What emerges through Loewenstein’s re­porting is a dark history of multinational corpo­rations that, with the aid of media and political elites, have grown more powerful than national governments. In the twenty-first century, the vulnerable have become the world’s most valu­able commodity. Disaster Capitalism is published by Verso in 2015 and in paperback in January 2017.

Vulture capitalism has seen the corporation become more powerful than the state, and yet its work is often done by stealth, supported by political and media elites. The result is privatised wars and outsourced detention centres, mining companies pillaging precious land in developing countries and struggling nations invaded by NGOs and the corporate dollar.
Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein travels to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea and across Australia to witness the reality of this largely hidden world of privatised detention centres, outsourced aid, destructive resource wars and militarized private security. Who is involved and why? Can it be stopped? What are the alternatives in a globalised world? Profits of Doom, published in 2013 and released in an updated edition in 2014, challenges the fundamentals of our unsustainable way of life and the money-making imperatives driving it. It is released in an updated edition in 2014.

Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? And Where do we find hope?
We are introduced to different belief systems – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position.
Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Bronte sisters. Antony Loewenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam.
Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake, published in 2013, encourages us to accept religious differences, but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.

After Zionism, published in 2012 and 2013 with co-editor Ahmed Moor, brings together some of the world s leading thinkers on the Middle East question to dissect the century-long conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians, and to explore possible forms of a one-state solution.
Time has run out for the two-state solution because of the unending and permanent Jewish colonization of Palestinian land. Although deep mistrust exists on both sides of the conflict, growing numbers of Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs are working together to forge a different, unified future. Progressive and realist ideas are at last gaining a foothold in the discourse, while those influenced by the colonial era have been discredited or abandoned. Whatever the political solution may be, Palestinian and Israeli lives are intertwined, enmeshed, irrevocably.
This daring and timely collection includes essays by Omar Barghouti, Jonathan Cook, Joseph Dana, Jeremiah Haber, Jeff Halper, Ghada Karmi, Antony Loewenstein, Saree Makdisi, John Mearsheimer, Ahmed Moor, Ilan Pappe, Sara Roy and Phil Weiss.

The 2008 financial crisis opened the door for a bold, progressive social movement. But despite widespread revulsion at economic inequity and political opportunism, after the crash very little has changed.
Has the Left failed? What agenda should progressives pursue? And what alternatives do they dare to imagine?
Left Turn, published by Melbourne University Press in 2012 and co-edited with Jeff Sparrow, is aimed at the many Australians disillusioned with the political process. It includes passionate and challenging contributions by a diverse range of writers, thinkers and politicians, from Larissa Berendht and Christos Tsiolkas to Guy Rundle and Lee Rhiannon. These essays offer perspectives largely excluded from the mainstream. They offer possibilities for resistance and for a renewed struggle for change.

The Blogging Revolution, released by Melbourne University Press in 2008, is a colourful and revelatory account of bloggers around the globe why live and write under repressive regimes - many of them risking their lives in doing so.
Antony Loewenstein's travels take him to private parties in Iran and Egypt, internet cafes in Saudi Arabia and Damascus, to the homes of Cuban dissidents and into newspaper offices in Beijing, where he discovers the ways in which the internet is threatening the ruld of governments.
Through first-hand investigations, he reveals the complicity of Western multinationals in assisting the restriction of information in these countries and how bloggers are leading the charge for change.
The blogging revolution is a superb examination about the nature of repression in the twenty-first century and the power of brave individuals to overcome it.
It was released in an updated edition in 2011, post the Arab revolutions, and an updated Indian print version in 2011.

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A Teaneck synagogue [in New Jersey] may become a flashpoint this weekend in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Congregation B’nai Yeshurun will host a real estate fair aimed at persuading American Jews to buy property in the disputed territories of the West Bank.

“The purchase of a home … is an ideological gesture of love of the Land of Israel,” said a letter to potential American investors from the Israeli group that’s conducting the event.

But critics say such land sales would inflame the conflict by bringing more Jewish settlers to the predominantly Palestinian territories….

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, the spiritual leader of B’nai Yeshurun, represents an Orthodox Jewish community that, generally speaking, opposes a Palestinian state and holds that Jews have a right, and a responsibility, to settle in the territories that are part of the biblical land of Israel.

Indeed, Pruzansky, who calls the territories by their biblical names of Judea and Samaria, said the meeting will be held in the sanctuary of his synagogue – rather than in its conference room – to underscore the notion of religious duty.

“I don’t think there is much hope for peace in my lifetime, unless the Messiah comes,” Pruzansky said. “And the main reason is that there are too many people who are not reconciled to Israel’s existence.”

As a stamp collector over the last 60 years, I have several stamps which are NOT forgeries. The country they come from is Palestine!

When my grandmother and aunt travelled from South Africa on holiday in 1936, they went to a country for a visit and the country was called Palestine.

How come Palestine doesn't exist?

A tip for you, Viva, go and learn a little history. Palestine exists, Palestinians exist, and Israel is sitting in the middle of Palestine!

Jews will continue to increase in numbers in Palestine because the Israelis are illegally selling land there to would-be settlers from the USA and elsewhere.

And, Viva, whether the Palestinians and Israelis like it or like it not, one day they will live in a one-state place with whatever name it gets called!

Addamo.

Viva is at it again,

He laments that the Arab countries historically threatened to wipe Israel off the map, but celebrates the fact that this is precisely what has happened to Palestine.

Nothing like getting rid of the evidence to hide the crime.

Here is a quote from Moshe Dayan to job his memory:

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu'a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.

viva peace

Mannie

Sorry, girlfriend, but "Palestine" existed for only 30 years. It ended the day Israel was declared and the day jordan and Egypt illegally invaded, ocupied, and annexed. Me thinks it is YOU who needs to the history books old son.

Addamo

Wrong again Viva,

there was no mention of ending Palestine's existence in the Balfour declaration or the UN Declaration recognizing Israel.

Your feeble attempt to tie the war with Egypt and Jordan with the ethnic cleasing of Palestinians from their homeland is disgusting. You should be ashamed. The enthic cleansing and theft of land were planned in March 1948 by Ben Gurion and 10 others.

I noticed that it was the Zionist biggots who have attacked you for either your sexuality. Not surprising, give that they approve of enthic cleansing and genocide in Palestine, but they do trip themselves up when making the case that gay people are treated better in Israel than most Arab countries.

In Viva's case, he argues that it's OK to be a homophobe, so long as he doesn't express it with violence.

Suze

Homophobic, racist. sexist and a zionist; Viva really is a well rounded persona. He manages to be wrong in every possible way.

viva peace

Suze/Addamo/Mannie

Evidence of homophobia, racism, and Zionism please?

Suze

Pet, evidence that you have a vocabulary of more than 20 words would also help.